 Well, I think our last speaker today really needs no introduction to most of you. You already know all about his presidential campaigns and his time as member of Congress. I would just throw this out. When I think back on the political career of Ron Paul, I think his two great accomplishments are this. One, the Giuliani moment, bringing the issue of war and peace back to the forefront and reclaiming it not as an issue somehow of the left. There's nothing more important than war and peace. And I think for that alone, there's a huge debt of gratitude. The second thing he did was he took what used to be a boring, wonkish, backburner issue known as monetary policy, and he brought it to the forefront. And now, thousands, if not millions of Americans because of Ron Paul are aware of the Fed and the great evil of our time, central banking. In addition to that, he found some time to apparently deliver a few babies along the road. Dr. Ron Paul. Thank you very much, everybody. So I would like to start off by talking about the subject. And the subject, of course, is secession and nullification, the breaking up of government. And the good news is, it's going to happen. It's happening. And it's not going to be because there will be enough people in the US Congress to legislate it. It won't happen. It will be de facto. You'll have a gold standard when the paper standard fails and we're getting awfully close to that. And people will have to resort to taking care of themselves. So when conditions break down, there's going to be an alternative. And I think that's what we're witnessing. I think the 20th century has been a fantastic century to prove so many things that went badly. For instance, Nazism and communism and fascism, total failure. I mean, who's going to get up and talk and say, OK, let's start a communist system? Well, they could have talked to Mises in 1912. He'd have told him it wasn't going to work anyway. But they tried it out. They had to experiment with it. And they killed millions of people. And there's a total failure. And the evidence is out there. So this to me is, we've seen this happen to me. This is very, very good news. At the same time, what we're currently witnessing is the failure of Keynesian interventionist planned economies associated with the Federal Reserve System. And that, too, will end. So I think we live in an age which I consider an end of an era, an end of an era that has made all these trials and tribulations. And I see it historically over a longer period of time. Because I think tyranny has been around a long time. A lot of times when they will criticize me or people like you who believe in liberty, you want to go back to the dark ages. They want to regress. And it's exactly the opposite. The people who object to what we believe in want to go back to the dark ages of tyranny and huge government and tyrants and kings and pharaohs and people who want to control our lives. And that is, I think, that's over and done with. And today we see so many non-government entities that have gained control. One example I see today that I think is so dramatic. We have now the biggest concern of the whole world is ISIS. Well, where do they live? What country are they from? Do they own the Soviet empire now or what? Well, they got a hunk of land over there. But all of a sudden, ISIS is the biggest threat to all the world. And we have to do whatever is necessary. And here, ISIS is essentially located around that area of Iraq and Syria. And they have a few thousand people involved. And they are ruthless and terrible, terrible people. But at the same time, if you look at around that area, you have nuclear weapons all over the place. The Russians have nuclear weapons. The United States, Israel has nuclear weapons. Pakistan, India, all these nuclear weapons. And they're totally helpless in dealing with this. And I think this is telling us that the old-fashioned organization of the government and the state is very, very weak and that what has gained strength is the countries and the movements that are dealing with ideas and getting people to support things. Unfortunately, ISIS is getting support from a lot of people. And they couldn't exist without the support of the local people. But it also means that they have had a tremendous impact without first becoming a huge government. And I think this is a sign of the times. And we're going to see this continue because the economic policies are going to fail. We're in the middle of that. And of course, the foreign policy is failing too. Right now, United States policy has decided, yes, we have to get them. We have to get these guys. And we have to have this war on terrorism. But we don't want to get hurt. And somebody will get other people. That's the change in policy. Bush was willing to send hundreds of thousands of people over there and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to solve this problem. It was a total failure. So now, well, we'll use other people. They have to cooperate and participate. I predict that that policy is not going to work. And lest we can combat the ideology that motivates the radicals, the ISIS, there can't be a victory. But the whole thing is, it's understanding the relationship of those who want to and do commit terrorist type of activities and who do make attempts to come here to kill Americans and kill Americans wherever they can go. And Jeff mentioned about the Giuliani moment. And I'll tell you what, as the years have gone on, to me personally, it becomes more and more significant of trying to understand this. Because right now, we've had this debate in the public. And I was in the middle of some of that about what was going on in France and the individuals that were killed. And all of a sudden, they're trying to figure out why, why, why? Well, it can't be foreign policy. And it's crucial that it's not foreign policy because it blows their whole cover for everything they've done for maybe 20 or 30 years in the Middle East, if not longer. It's all justified because there are mean, nasty terrorists who want to kill us because we're free and because we're prosperous. That has to be proven as an absolute lie or we cannot win this fight. And the people involved in this are quite numerous and there's a lot at stake. One of the stories, a historic moment, too, that brought this to light and helped me to understand this was the history of Pol Pot, how he came into power. Pol Pot, most everybody knows, he was a bad guy and he eventually had control of Cambodia and he was ruthless and killed a lot of people. And our policy had a lot to do with that, having that happen. So that people turn around like they do when we make our statements about blowback. They say, well, that means that you're blaming America on what Pol Pot did. No, that is not the case. What happened there was when we had a president elected in 1968 to stop the Vietnam War, he was less than ethical in what he pursued right afterwards because if you think about it, after Nixon was elected 35,000 Americans were still killed. But he immediately went into a war against Cambodia and dropped 500,000 tons of bomb. It was the equivalent of five Hiroshima-type bombs. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were killed. Pol Pot existed before that and he was because he was unhappy with his government. Probably he was first to thug and probably a communist but he was there. But guess what happened? After we did that with our bombs and killed so many people, it unified the people. His 2,000-man army rather quickly became 250,000 troops he took over the country. So our policies have a lot to do with it. It didn't create Pol Pot, but our policies seem to aggravate it and make it a lot worse and yet we still lose the argument so often on national television that blowback means that you blame America to pass that off. But that to me is the whole issue is if they, if they lose that argument, they lose all their justification for being in the Middle East and that would be a real disaster for them. But the Pol Pot I think is a good story to remember to point out how our stuff backfires on us and a lot of people get killed. What about what happened in Iraq? I mean, there's a, even before 03 when we started the war, the official war, it was admitted by Madeleine Albright. There were 500,000 Iraqis died because of our policy. And to believe that we have a policy like that and the Secretary of State admits it and has no bearing on the way those people look at us and that some people might become angry enough to wanna kill us. To ignore that is putting a head in the sand and I think it's such an important issue to understand. But here we went into Iraq and since then probably even after 03, 700,000 Iraqis were killed. And the whole purpose, well it's hard to figure out what their purpose was. I don't know whether the people who ran our policy were idiots or whether they had some ulterior motive but nothing happened to the good from that invasion of Iraq. What did we do? We got rid of Saddam Hussein. He's a bad guy according to many standards. But Saddam Hussein hated the al-Qaeda and he didn't like the Iranians. So what do we do? We go in, we kill him and we remake Iraq. And guess what? We essentially have turned it over to Iran. They have total control of this. So now chaos has come back to the country. They're begging and pleading for us to send in more troops. ISIS has control of a third of Iraq up north and the ISIS would just as soon do what they did what we want done and that is get rid of Assad. So it's so much ridiculous chaos that we have created there. And it comes down to one thing. Decision that we as a people have to make on whether or not a foreign policy of interventionism, getting involved in the internal affairs of other nations or getting involved in entangling alliances and pursuing and believing in preemptive war. That is the issue. And I would say the founders gave us good advice. Stay out of the internal affairs of all nations and stay out of entangling alliances. And that would mean that our policy today as soon as possible would be to bring all our troops home. The global war on terrorism is a hot issue because if you're not super for it then you're un-American. But the global war on terrorism has been going on for a good while now. And we find out that just recently there's a turnover in leadership in Saudi Arabia. And those are our best friends over there. And yet they're the ones who practice Wahhabism and the Shia laws. They have performed many, many more beheadings in Saudi Arabia than the ISIS do. But you never hear anything of it. Now with the death of the king we're talking about, isn't it wonderful he was our best friend? He was modern. He moved the country in the right direction. And nobody asks one thing about human rights. You know, we're the decision makers about who practices human rights or not. So we fail to notice, at least not many people talk about it. Then when it came to 9-11 and 15 out of the 19 hijackers where'd they come from? From Saudi Arabia. And we're supposed to believe this. Unfortunately, all this mass depends on the propagandists. And that's where it's very, very tough. But it's also the place where we're making inroads because there's more than three major networks on television. There's a lot of people outside of the three majors that are available, whether it's the internet or whatever, that a lot of people are waking up, especially the young people of this country, said, it's enough of this killing. It's time we change our foreign policy. One place where we've had a tough argument has been with the Ukraine. Because I criticize our position there, participating in the coup that took place, they throw out the accusation, oh, Ron Paul, and those who believe this way, that you are supporters of Putin. You're defending Putin and everything he ever did from 50 years ago, which is absolutely not true. But if we don't look at the truth, then we fail to understand what's happening. But the one of the most remarkable phone conversations overheard, and I'm sure the NSA had the phone conversation, but you can be sure they didn't turn it over to us. And that was the phone conversation between Victoria Nugent and also Jeffrey Pyatt. And they had this conversation about how they were planning the coup, who they were going to put in place. It was so blatant. And then they lie through their teeth every day and say, oh, we had nothing to do with it. It was all the Russians fault, and they did this, and hey, they did that. And yet we have an Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, along with the ambassador to Ukraine, talking on the telephone, planning the coup. And I don't think it made too many major network programs on television. It just isn't there. And they're still in those positions. They're still important people in administration. But this is just a further problem that we have to sort out this truth so that we can get enough people in this country to say, let's just stay out of these messes. But the propaganda is build up. You have to hate the enemy because that is the only way you can get young people to fight or countries to support war is you have to dehumanize the enemy. And that is one of the biggest efforts that is done by governments, all governments, especially our government, we have to hate those individuals in order to go out and travel, fly 6,000 miles away and start bombing people that never attacked us and we have never seen bomb and kill as many as we can. So I have argued the case that there's no reason why we can't move in a better direction. The failure of the economic system, the failure of the foreign policy, why can't civilization advance? Advance in the understanding of peace. You say, well, war, there's gonna be wars and rumors or wars forever and ever and that's the way it's been. But why is it that it has to be that way? I mean the history of freedom, but matter of fact, recorded history isn't all that old. And if you look at the history of freedom, it's just hundreds of years old and we have our ups and downs, but generally it's better understood now than it was thousands of years ago. So there's this effort to understand and move in this direction, but so many people don't quite understand the importance of what we do. So I believe if you took technology and instead of using it to advance the weapons of war, take technology and advance the ability to promote peace and understanding, that is what we really need. And I think the tools are there. I think the internet and the technology is there is to spread a different message. You say, not still impossible, there's always gonna be mean, nasty people and I agree, there always will be and there's always gonna be criminals and a lot of violence. So I still think that technology made great progress, especially in the last couple hundred years, talking to my dad when I was a small person, my dad delivered milk and a horse and buggy. He remembers the first automobile and the first airplane. And that's just a short while ago and there was a time when maybe 50 years before he was born, if somebody would said, we're gonna be driving these cars and we're gonna be flying these airplanes and we're gonna land on the moon, there's no way. The technology came along and unfortunately the technology was so often used to advance the way of killing people. So yes, we had airplanes, but airplanes also were used to drop bombs on people. So it was being used in the wrong manner. But I just think that that period of time can end, that we can change that, that we can change the human condition where we think about peace. For that reason, I've been fascinated with looking at some of the stories about the conflict between war and peace when it comes to the enemies fighting each other. And of course, most of us have heard and know the story about the Christmas, the Christmas truce in World War I. At the beginning of World War I, it broke out and the German soldiers and the British soldiers got together. And they had no stomach for all this. They started singing Christmas carols and called it truce and some places it lasted several days. They exchanged presents and Christmas trees. And the tragedy was that after several days, the authorities came and said, you better get back to killing. And they were forced to back into killing. But the natural tendency was for the soldiers not to fight. And I remember so clearly my grandmother telling me who was from, the family was from Germany. And I was less than 10 because I was 10 when the war was over. I went to go and ask her, why is this happening? You have me saying prayers for my aunts that live in Germany that they survive at the same time we have a cousin in prison, in Germany, you know? And she says, Ronnie, she says, you know what it is? She says, the people don't want war. It's the governments that want war. And I think the story about the Christmas truce in World War I, that was the beginning of World War I, but there's another story that I came across. I found fascinating. And this is a story in World War II. It was at the end. It was after D-Day. And an American plane had been shot down, but it was in a place where they were really in a life and death struggle with some Germans. The Americans were gaining strength. But the pilot who was flying at a Jack Teller, he was a captain. And he always for some reason took a trumpet with him. And he just loved the trumpet. And so he had that trumpet with him. And they were in this situation where they were in the battle, but they had killed off most of the snipers, the German snipers. But there was one left. And he was in a dilemma because what he did at the time when things were quieter, he played his trumpet. So he got his trumpet up. But his commander came and said, don't play it. This is a bad set of circumstances. We have a sniper out there, in no sense, encouraging him to come and shoot us. So the captain said, well, he says, I have a suspicion that that guy out there is probably lonely and scared. He says, I'm going to play my trumpet anyway. And lo and behold, something happened when he started playing that trumpet. Now I have a little clip of the song that Teller played during that time. Can we hear that little playing? I love trumpets. And these circumstances were very special and different. And the trumpet player played that. And there was no more shooting. And the next day, the German sniper walked into the American camp and surrendered. And they got him prepared to take him off to a prisoner of war camp in England. And he said, well, before I go, can I meet the person that played the trumpet? And so they took him over and they shook hands. And our American captain says, I just shook hands with the enemy. And he found out that he was 19 years old. And he said that he was scared to death. And he says, I heard that song. And it made me think about my fiance, my mother and father. And he says, I could not shoot another shot. And I just think that is remarkable. I just think that there's no reason why we can't have more of that getting to the people who have to do the killing and reject the notion and the propaganda of our governments. And that would mean that we have to take the power and authority away from the government to wage war. That's where the problem is. The only country in the world today that I think even comes slightly close to this because they don't have an executive branch of government or the Swiss. They can't go to war like this. And they haven't been in war in a couple of hundred years. So we need to take the authority away from the government. Even the law that prohibits them from going to war like we have. You can't go to war unless the people support the war. It doesn't work. So someday what we need to do, and if that doesn't work, we need to build up enough enthusiasm and determination and belief that those individuals who are required or drafted or bribed into going off and fighting the senseless war that they just refuse to go. You know, what's interesting about Lily Marlene, Marlene, the song was, there was a sort of controversy with the Germans. Ramo loved it. And Garibals, you know, he looked at it and allowed it to play. And then he thought it was too soft. It wasn't militant enough. So he made them quit using it. And the German soldiers rebelled. They wanted to hear that song. Everybody loved that song. It must have given them some peace. So we put back on the radio the German soldiers could hear the song and they could play it. But the interesting thing is that the Americans love the song too. So yes, it's the government. It's not the people. It's not the soldiers that make the war. It's the governments that do. So there's so much harm and injury in this country created by this propaganda by people who think that war is the answers. And I keep trying to figure out, we do know that many on our side doing the things we don't want them to do, I believe there's some evil motivation among some. But I also think there's a lot of ignorance and a lot of them fall for the propaganda. Young people who go, because I've been there. When I was drafted, you know, in the 60s, you know, I didn't like what was going on, but it wasn't at the point where I knew enough and had enough confidence to take on the US government and maybe go to prison. So it's a struggle. That's the reason why a few individuals can't do it. You have to have a whole understanding by a people that we reject the notion of war. And I think this is what probably has helped Switzerland and it's not like they lived in a perfectly safe area. I mean, the mountains isn't what protected them. It was a lot more to it and it was a notion that they weren't going to get involved in other people's affairs. But, you know, our concern, of course, is based on our concept of liberty. I'm convinced that we can solve so many of our problems whether they're economics or foreign policy by just a better understanding of liberty. I believe our founders understood this and that it's an individual thing. It's not a collective thing. And that's where I am so hopeful. I speak to a lot of young people groups at a lot of college campuses and there's a lot of enthusiasm whether it's the Federal Reserve or whether it's non-interventionist foreign policy. So it's out there. But if they don't hear that there's enough support, of course they won't feel strong enough to resist. But people must understand exactly what it is. And liberty is something governments can't give us. It comes from our creator, it comes in a natural way. And everybody has to be treated the same. And you say, well, is that mean you believe in perfect equality? No, perfect and equal justice under law. And you don't deal with people as a collective. You don't reward people or punish people because they belong to a group. There's only one group that I'm interested in that is you as an individual to have your rights protected and you have the responsibility of taking care of yourself and have the right to keep the fruits of your labor. That's what we need. You know, Mises was quite concerned about the future of the country and he had a lot of concerns and not exactly the most optimistic person. He said we were moving rapidly in the wrong direction. Socialism was very bad but interventionism would lead to fascism. So he had a lot of concerns but he also had some good advice. He says that for the flowering of the human spirit to be achieved, what you first have to have are individuals who are willing to understand and write and study ideas and theories and come up with them and write them down. Be the intellectual. Intellectual like Tom Woods who knows how to write this stuff down. You know, you have to have these ideas. You have to have organizations like the Mises Institute like what Lou's been doing for many, many decades and the work Jeff has done and so many others here in the audience. Those ideas have to be put down there but eventually what you need and I put myself more in this category is take these ideas and explain them, understand them first and then explain them and he uses the word palatable because these ideas have to be made palatable to the American people, all the people because if it's a fancy theory and it's hard to understand, it's not gonna do as much good so eventually you have a large number of people making them palatable. Everybody has a responsibility for that is to know and understand and spread a message. Just by being here means you're interested in spreading a message and that's certainly what Lou's been working so hard on and getting professors to learn about this and talk to their students. So this is where the progress has been made and that is the area where I'm the most optimistic and also it was Samuel Adams who said that don't worry about the majority. Well, I'm concerned about the majority but I know what he means that you need the minority an irate minority who's determined to pursue these views but eventually you have to have 51% but the people who lead are probably gonna be 6, 7, 8%. That's the small number of people that are revolution but you have to have an endorsement by the people and that's why you have to sell these ideas and 51% become pretty important. So it is said that no government exists without that so no matter how terrible the dictators are they eventually get thrown out if the people don't endorse it as long as they believe I'm going to get taken care of and socialism is good because they're gonna give me food and jobs and all this that the system continues but if you don't have the 51% it doesn't exist. So you need the theoreticians, you need the people who spread the message, you need to get people excited about the issues and that's how we change things and a lot of times today we talk a lot about percentages and we know that there's 1% out there that's caused all the trouble, the 99 and the 1%. And that is an important percentage to be concerned about too because the 1% those who live off us, those who are living in the military industrial complex and they're living off the government and they control the government, they have control of the Federal Reserve and the banking system. That 1% need to be called upon and we need to get rid of that by getting rid of the power of government to take care of that part of the 1%. But the other part we shouldn't put them together that's the people who are wealthy because we make them wealthy because we buy their products because they give us a good product and they make a lot of money. Making a lot of money should be an incentive it shouldn't be something you penalize and that's the one problem we have with the far left they want to penalize it but they can't separate these two. Everybody is thrown together and they don't ask the question well how did you earn your money? Well, what we do is if you had a free society and limited government there wouldn't be anybody living off anybody else. The government would be so limited they would not have this power to redistribute wealth and control the whole system. And yet it's coming to an end the Fed is going to end there's going to be a de facto succession movement going on the states are going to refuse to listen to some of the laws we've seen tremendous success already with states saying to the federal government we're not going to listen to you anymore about the drug laws and they're getting out of it and I think that American people are waking up to that and so as far as I'm concerned the more the more the merrier but freedom to me is the answer and if you understand what liberty is all about like I mentioned before liberty should bring us all together bring it should bring us together it should bring it should solve the problem of conflict between races and class and religions and everything else but if you understand liberty it means everybody should come together to defend liberty and then understand that what you do with your liberty and what you do with your liberty may be 100% different in religion we understand it we understand that some people have different views and as long as they're not hurting other people and some refuse to even believe in religion well in a society that respects liberty people still come together and fight for the cause of liberty and of course that means that it would be a society that would be much peaceful within but it would also be a society that would have a different foreign policy and a different foreign policy a different type of government you wouldn't permit governments to have all this power and authority over other people so I rather am pretty high on the issue of liberty and I'm pretty low on the idea of government so the problem in just so many things that I see and I also believe that if the people wake up not only would we have a more prosperous economy but we would have a happier people and we certainly would have a lot less war thank you very much glad to be with you today